housewife housewife:
They get Leftovers from garage sales, midnight moves and estates. Some of it heartbreaking when you can tell the family historian has passed and we now have all the info including hydro paperwork for a home built in the early 1930. Cost of 4000. Plus the family recipes. I have some of the recipes some day I will scan them and put them on line for the world.
About 15 years ago Mrs. Bart had a passing fancy for estate sales until she found it to be incredibly depressing.
We attended one estate sale in the Land Park area in Sacramento and we were among the first people there. The woman running the sale was very hateful of her father who had been a US diplomat of some sort before WW2. I got to see his 'war room' with all of his mementos and pictures from the time and they included autographed pictures from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He also had a set of Norman Rockwell's lithographs
The Four Freedoms which were all four signed by Rockwell. There was a volume of Churchill's "The Second World War" signed by Churchill, a Nazi gorget that was made of gold and platinum, a Nazi Knights Cross with Diamonds, and assorted personal letters including one from President Lyndon Johnson to the woman's father.
She sold me the lot for $250 in cash.
The Hitler photograph sold for over $8,000.
The Mussolini picture sold for $1500.
The Rockwell lithographs we donated to the Norman Rockwell museum.
The Churchill books and the rest I still have.
...
Subsequently we attended a few more estate sales and noticed the recurring trend of ungrateful and spiteful children who hated their parents and saw a lifetime of treasures and memories as just so much trash.
That did it for both of us and we stopped going to these events. It was just too fucking depressing.